Buenos...

This last summer, I did interview-based microfinance research and almost every time I would ask a thought-provoking question, the interviewee would start her answer with “Bue-no…”

Anyway (no “s”), I spent the last weekend in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we do not have Friday classes, meaning every weekend is automatically a three-day weekend. Well, this past weekend had a Monday holiday, meaning we had a four-day weekend (my life is so difficult here). As soon as I realized that the first weekend of May would be an extra long weekend, I earmarked it for Buenos Aires. My older brother and his wife are avid travelers. Before they met, they’d each traveled about Europe, etc. Since dating and marriage, they have taken on the world—even taking a one-year break dedicated to world travel. After they returned from this vacation (?), they told me that Buenos Aires was quite possibly their favorite city in the world. While Eric and Mariah certainly have the travel bug and often itch to venture to new places, I do not, in general, feel this impulse on such an instinctual level. The two places I have felt this type of urge to see are Buenos Aires and a place in China that Amy Tan describes in Joy Luck Club. I’ll have to re-read Joy Luck to remember the name of that place, but she described a placid and crystal-clear lake that had giant rocks sticking out of the water that look like giant fish leaping to catch a mosquito. And, ever since Eric and Mariah (muffin and muffin) told me about Buenos, I’ve yearned to visit it. It’s not that I don’t want to visit and explore other places; it’s just that I don’t feel a deep yearning to do so.

One might ask: Anne, if you felt this unbearable need to visit Buenos Aires, then why would you waste some of your long weekend in Uruguay!?! Well, the answer is fairly economic. If you fly into Buenos Aires from Santiago directly, you can only stop at the main Buenos airport. In the main Buenos airport, you must pay a reciprocity fee of $131. However, if you stop in Uruguay first, you can fly into a more minor airport in Argentina and thus avoid this nasty tax. Thus, at the dark hour of 4:00 AM, I woke up, showered, and trekked to Manuel Montt where a large group of us met to take a shuttle to the airport to fly to Montevideo for one day before heading on to Buenos Aires. The flight to Montevideo took about two hours and I was able to read, sleep, and chat a bit.

In Santiago, the weather has changed such that it very much feels like late fall/early winter. I wear long pants, boots, long sleeve shirts, scarves, and jackets. The weather in Montevideo was much more pleasant. I sported a dress and flip-flops and even had to put my hair up for a bit because it was a tad toasty. This change of weather was well welcomed and I’m beginning to grow excited for California’s summer. We spent one day and one night in Montevideo. And as soon as we had checked into the hostel, organized our belongings, and took out a few Uruguayan pesos, we set out for our day. Most of our group of six was hungry and so we settled upon a restaurant in a park that was bustling with people, full of flowers, and complete with fountain. On Tuesday of that same week, I had begun to feel a bit ill and, when I woke up for class on Wednesday, I felt atrocious. I somehow managed to take my morning shower but as soon as I put on my clothes, I realized that attempting to go to class was utterly futile. I was weak, exhausted, and had an unstable-at-best stomach. Unfortunately, that Wednesday was also the morning of my Spanish midterm and I had studied and was ready to take it and do well. I have never missed a test in my life but that morning I did not even care if the teacher would or would not let me make it up. I called the program director who talked with the Spanish professor who told me that we could reschedule for next week. I then slept the rest of the day and ate nothing but a few saltine crackers and a mug of tea. Thus, on Friday even when everybody else in our group was quite hungry by the time we ate in Montevideo, my stomach was still a sensitive and I did not have much of an appetite.

After finishing up our lunch—one boy, Kenan, had a steak that was bigger than my head—we decided that we would like to spend the day walking along the water. I say “water” because it is unclear whether it was a river or an ocean. My main group of four often gets into little debates and spats that last a few minutes and pass as a distant memory. However, our “river or ocean” disagreement was by far the most contentious and long lasting of all our disagreements. Our group was evenly divided (Zach and I against Lauren and Jason) and each side was equally fervent in our convictions. The water flowed like a river, but there was not a visible side to the river. The map called it a river, but the tidepools had saltwater animals living in them. The water was brown like a river, but the coast looked a lot like the Caribbean coast in the Dominican Republic. Etc. etc. etc. After several days of bickering and arguing we learned several things. 1. Montevideo is on an estuary (where a river and ocean meet) and 2. The river that runs into the ocean is, in fact, the widest river in the world. It is comforting to know that our most vehement fight had merit on both sides and that, in truth, we were both half wrong and half right. Yeah, yeah, yeah I hate games where everybody wins, but still at least one side wasn’t stubborn AND completely off base.

Our day of walking along the water was lovely. There was a sidewalk that ran along the coast and along the way there were people fishing, sitting and chatting, and enjoying mate. Mate is loose leaf, highly caffeinated, and bitter tea. The way it works is a person has mate cup, usually wooden, and it is filled with mate leaves. You then add water to the leaves and drink the tea through a special straw that filters out (most of) the leaves. Then, since the tea is so strong, after you finish the tea, you just add more water and you do this on repeat until the leaves loose their flavor and strength or until you’re bored. Apparently drinking from second day mate is a recipe for disaster and you’ll surely become sick. Anyway, we saw dozens upon dozens of people sitting or walking around town/the coast with their cup and straw and thermos full of hot water.

I fell in love with the idea of mate. I was swept up in the romance of people’s killing a whole day just chatting and sharing this tea that you drink with a special, silver straw. I was determined to try mate and then purchase all of the accessories so that I could enjoy the quintessential Uruguayan/Argentinean cultural experience whenever I wanted. I’ll have a 50-minute commute this summer and I had imagined myself driving to work while listening to my book-on-tape with my mate in my cup holder. In Argentina I finally had the chance to try mate and, try as I might, I could not like it. It was too bitter and woody. Even after sweetening it with sugar, I could not stand the taste. In Steinbeck’s East of Eden, he writes (paraphrased) that it is as if the gods have fallen when children first realize their parents are not perfect. While the fallibility of my parents has never been a personal stumbling block, the tea gods lost a good deal of their power when I discovered my distaste for mate. Ultimately, I decided that I appreciate the cultural role that mate plays, but the flavor was enough of a deterrent to keep me from purchasing any mate paraphernalia. I guess I’ll be sipping my homemade café au laits on the way to work this summer.

After walking along the coast for a little over an hour, we came upon a nice grassy spot. Several people wanted to take a nap but I had spotted a pier and decided I would rather explore that area then sleep. One other intrepid traveler, Zach, went with me and we climbed over some rocks as we made our way to the pier. Once on the pier we decided to walk to the very edge and sit with our feet dangling. Literally seconds after Zach expressed concern that we might get splashed, a wave hit a rock beneath us, drenching Zach and sprinkling me. Being the good friend that I am, I let him use my sweater to dry off a bit. It was particularly funny because he had been the one who was most concerned about getting wet and most disturbed by the quality (or lack thereof) of the water. I guess karma exist because while walking back down the pier, I put my hand in some gross brown thing on one of the beams.

We then ambled back to the group and together ventured back to the hostel. We met up with the rest of the big, big group and went out to dinner. As I mentioned in a prior post, there is not much that is efficient about a large group of people. However, I was ultimately quite happy with where we settled for dinner. I had sausage and bread was seated such that I could see into a tango club. It was called Tango Joven, which could be interpreted two ways 1. Young tango or 2. I am young. There were only older couples in the club so I suppose the idea is that you are never too old to learn how to dance and/or that dancing keeps you young. I believe both. There are few things I openly proselytize, but dance in one of those things. I believe it is good for your body and your soul and there are many important life lessons that apply to dance and visa versa. Between mate and old couples dancing tango, my romantic senses were thoroughly peaked in Uruguay.

Since we were only in Montevideo for one night and since it was Jessie’s 21^st, many people wanted to go out in full force. I, however, was exhausted from the early morning, still coming off of being sick, and eager to make sure I could “go out in full force” while in Buenos Aires. Thus, I ended up crashing at about midnight. I rose before the rest of the group, was one of the few to have a piping hot shower, and enjoyed the breakfast spread of fruit, cereal, and coffee before we left for the airport.

Now, as I had mentioned, I had been itching to go to Buenos Aires and I had three goals for that trip: 1. Eat lots and lots of steak. 2. Try mate, love it, and bring it home. 3. Watch and/or dance lots of tango. The first I fulfilled several times over. Eric and Mariah had tempted me with fairy tales of steak and wine dinners for less than $10 USD and those fairy tales turned into a very sweet (and savory) reality. I fulfilled the first part of goal number two but, as I said earlier, parts two and three did not really materialize. Little did I know that brief glimpses of tango that I caught in Uruguay would be the only tango I watched during that weekend. I could very much go back to Buenos because I would be happy to eat more food and would like to actually experience Argentine Tango.

However, in not seeing any tango, I learned a good lesson about myself. On Sunday night, we were walking to check out three different tango places, all of which were closed because we got too late a start. While our group of four was talking, somebody made a quip about needing to have made better plans. I felt personally insulted and not supported in these efforts because people had been napping and had not really helped with tango research while we were discussing what to do earlier. Thus, I stepped aside, walked around in a couple of circles, and took a few deep breaths. When I returned to the group, they all looked at me a bit weird and asked what was wrong. I just said I needed to cool down a bit and that I was good now. However, they did not let me get away with that. They told me it was important for me to tell them what was bugging me and for me to be open. That comment hit me like a 2x4 to the head. I realized that I am not very good at expressing my desires or frustrations. Instead, I try to persuade my friends through other forces so that they realize what I want them to realize. What I realized in that moment is sometimes my wanting to do something can be enough of a reason for my friends. Of course, the same is true for me with respect to them--not all of the time and certainly not with everything, but sometimes it’s ok just to do something to make another person happy and sometimes I get to be the recipient of that happiness.

Other tid bits from Buenos:

My favorite ice cream in the whole world is chocolate malted crunch. In Buenos I tried vanilla, caramel with chololate-covered malted crunch balls…and that was awesome.

I also went to a club on Saturday night and requested a song. The DJ played my request almost immediately and I felt rather triumphant.

The stop lights go from green to yellow to red and then from red to yellow to green. I have always thought that it would be so much more convenient if there were a color in between the red and the green.

The widest street in the world is in in Buenos Aires and you basically would have to run to make it all the way across with one cross light. Lauren tried speed walking and just barely did not make it. In one weekend we saw the widest river and widest street in the world. Pretty damn epic if you ask me.

In addition to debates and story swapping, our group of four likes to play various word games while traveling. This trip we developed a new one. It’s called trivia question. Basically, one person asks a trivia question, if you get it right, you get a point and you have to ask the next one. Just so y’all know. I’m currently in the lead with 15!

Some of our questions:

-Where is Coca-Cola headquartered?

-What does “L” represent in Roman numerals?

-What country are we in? (no, Lauren, the answer is not Chile)

-a teeter-totter physics/balance problem

-What is Dr. Seuss’s real name? What fraternity was Dr. Seuss in?

-What famous author navigated the Mississippi?

-What was the first country in South America to have a railroad?

Sorry, this post kind of drops off, but I’m not really sure how to tie it up properly

So *Insert beautiful conclusion here*